All Rise...

The Charge

"Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it
is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world
revolution."â€"-Nicolae Ceaușescu

The Case

On March 22, 1965, Nicolae Ceaușescu was elected as the General
Secretary of the Socialist Republic of Romania. For the next 25 years,
Ceaușescu would increasingly prove to his people and to the world that he
belonged at the elite level of repressive dictators. During his reign, which
could only end in front of a firing squad, he unleashed one of the most
oppressive regimes that Europe had ever seen, a group that includes some
impressively oppressive regimes.

At the end of the 1960s, as leftist politics swept the world, Ceaușescu
started out fairly popular, taking diplomatic tours of the US, France, and
England and soaking up the praise. Quickly, though, he tightened his hold on his
people until, finally, starving his people by exporting all their agriculture
and medicine to pay the government's debt. By then, the only people who still
respected him were Kim Il-sung and Mao Zedong, on whom he based his own brand of
personality cult. After he ordered the military to fire upon his own people,
then, nobody was surprised or sad to see him hunted and shot dead.

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the three-hour
representation of Ceaușescu's time in power, is an intense and amazing feat
of editing. Director Andrei Ujica (Out of the Present) and editor Dana
Bunescu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days) poured over thousands of hours of
footage taken from propaganda reels, national archives, and home movies to
assemble a massive, daunting look at the rise and fall of a dictator.

Ujica uses no outside perspective in the film, no narrator or talking head
of any kind. By simply cutting together the raw footage and letting it play, he
creates a rather extraordinary historical document. With footage from speeches,
diplomatic events, and family vacations, we see him at his most bloviating and
most personable, as well as just how bad he was at volleyball. While very funny,
it may seem trivial to show some of that stuff, except that it adds a human side
to the monster everybody knows him as and it offsets the footage of him glad
handing Nixon and basking in a celebration for him, North Korea style. Though
people might not want to hear about the man behind the evil, it's important to
giving an accurate and neutral portrait.

The length of The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu, as well as
the frequent lack of sound, might give the movie a limited audience, but it's a
phenomenal piece of history that anybody with even a shred of interest in the
subject should see. Unflinching, often bold, and sometimes very funny, this is
one of the strongest portraits of a political figure that I've ever seen.

Kino Lorber has released a very standard issue DVD for The Autobiography
of Nicolae Ceaușescu, but one that fits the bill. Because of its
decades of archival footage, the image quality varies with every clip. Overall,
the transfer looks sharp, but there is plenty of damage to the original sources,
making it understandably limited. The sound is varied, especially given that
much of the footage is silent, and the speeches definitely have their share of
background noise to contend with. Again, it's an understandable problem, but one
that's definitely there. The only extras are a trailer and a bit of DVD-ROM info
that gives a who's who in Ceaușescu's life.

It's an acceptable disc, but The Autobiography of Nicolae
Ceaușescu probably deserves a little more on the supplement side than
it received. Still, if you have the patience for it, this is an amazing document
and a historical treasure.